A Small Injustice, A Grave Threat to Liberty
Karen Fletcher receives five years of probation, including six months of home detention, and forfeiture of her computer after pleading guilty Thursday to obscenity charges for running a Web site that had text stories that were sexual and violent involving children.
Now no one is saying that Ms. Fletcher is exactly public citizen #1. These were after child porn stories but they were just that, fictional words on a page. No children were harmed by them, they weren’t real, and as the article noted, there were no pictures.
Keep in mind if they can come after her words they can come after yours by the simple expedient of declaring them obscene. That is not acceptable.
Now 5 years probation, even if 6 are under house isn’t a huge injustice but its still wrong.
Its no ones business what people read, however sick it is. Its not my business, its not yours and its especially not some cryptofascist Fundie Bushnick busy body like the persecutorsr Mary Beth Buchanan’s, business. This seems to be a political appointee whose main contribution to American security seems to have been this nonsense oh and locking up Tommy Chong for selling pipes.
Let me say this, no one healthy wants to read or write that filth. But the entire concept behind the prosecution was flawed. Obscenity is short hand for legislated narrow mindedness and is antithetical to 1st and 9th amendment freedoms.
Why child pornography is rightly illegal is because children are raped to make it not because it or anything else is icky.
In cases like this it needs to be as they used to say in High School sports, No Harm. No Foul.